学术信息

讲座题目：When Ethics Meet Algorithms: Corporate Social Responsibility in Personalized Pricing and Network Effects（当道德准则与算法相遇：个性化定价与网络效应中的企业社会责任）

主讲人：卢立建 香港科技大学商学院

讲座时间：2025年12月04日15:00

讲座地点：学院419

内容摘要：

As big data and advanced analytics become more prevalent, companies are increasingly adopting personalized pricing strategies. While these strategies can boost profitability, they also raise concerns about fairness and consumer privacy, often leading to reduced price transparency. This paper explores how corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can reconcile the tension between profit-driven personalized pricing and consumer welfare in digital markets characterized by network effects and price (un)observability. We show that, without CSR, price discrimination can diminish consumer surplus and firm profits due to coordination failures among consumers stemming from network externalities and price opacity. Our findings reveal that CSR initiatives -- especially those that factor consumer surplus into pricing -- create a self-regulating mechanism that: (1) aligns consumer incentives, (2) enhances firm profits beyond standard discriminatory pricing, and (3) leads to Pareto improvements by increasing surplus for all market participants. We validate our findings across various contexts, including different network structures and sequential purchasing, illustrating their generalizability and robustness. These results underscore the vital role of CSR in fostering efficiency and sustainability in personalized pricing. Our findings offer managers a strategic framework for ethical pricing that strengthens competitive positioning in digital markets and provide valuable guidance for policymakers, suggesting that CSR incentives can effectively address concerns related to algorithmic fairness.

随着大数据与高级分析技术的日益普及，企业越来越多地采用个性化定价策略。尽管这类策略能够提升盈利能力，但也引发了关于公平性与消费者隐私的担忧，并往往导致价格透明度降低。本文探讨了在具有网络效应和价格（非）可观测性特征的数字市场中，企业社会责任（CSR）举措如何调和逐利性个性化定价与消费者福利之间的张力。研究证明，在缺乏CSR的情况下，由于网络外部性与价格不透明引发的消费者协调失灵，价格歧视可能损害消费者剩余与企业利润。研究发现，CSR举措——特别是那些将消费者剩余纳入定价考量的举措——能构建一种自我调节机制，该机制具有以下特征：（1）协调消费者激励，（2）将企业利润提升至超越标准歧视性定价的水平，（3）通过增加所有市场参与者的剩余实现帕累托改进。我们在多种情境下验证了研究结论，包括不同网络结构与序列购买行为，证明了其普适性与稳健性。这些结果凸显了CSR在促进个性化定价效率与可持续性方面的重要作用。本研究为管理者提供了强化数字市场竞争地位的道德准则定价战略框架，同时为政策制定者提供了重要参考，表明CSR激励机制能有效应对算法公平性相关议题。

主讲人简介：

Professor Lu is an Assistant Professor at HKUST School of Business and Management. His primary research interests are in the area of data-driven decision-making with a focus on applications in e-commerce, pricing and revenue management, supply chain management, healthcare and service systems, finance-operations interface. His work has been recognized by world leading journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Mathematics of Operations Research, Production and Operations Management. He is recipient of Finalist of INFORMS George Nicholson Student Paper Competition and Second place of POMS College of Supply Chain Management Student Paper Competition .Prior to joining HKUST Business School, Professor Lu took senior leadship in three sectors: finance, e-commerce, and online display advertising. Professor Lu was Founder and CIO at UniQuant Capital, where he lead quantitative research team and manage 3 billions quantitative long-short hedge funds; Executive Director at China Innovation Fund leading PE/VC investment in TMT area with 150 billions AUM; Vice President at Goldman Sachs Asset Management leading quantitative factor portfolio research and management with 15 billions USD AUM; Senior Research Scientist at Knight Capital Group on high frequency trading, at Amazon.com on e-commerce and logistic optimization, at AppNexus.com on online display advertising market.

卢立建，香港科技大学商学院助理教授。其主要研究领域包括数据驱动决策，重点关注电子商务、定价与收益管理、供应链管理、医疗健康与服务系统、金融与运营交叉界面等方向的应用研究。其学术成果发表于Management Science、Manufacturing & Service Operations Management、Mathematics of Operations Research、Production and Operations Management等国际权威期刊。在加入香港科技大学商学院前，卢教授曾在金融、电子商务及在线广告三大部门担任高级管理职务，曾任UniQuant Capital创始人兼CIO、中国创新基金执行董事、高盛资产管理公司副总裁，并曾在骑士资本集团、亚马逊公司、AppNexus公司任职。